


A Corrupt Politician, a Demon, and a Terrorist

by brawltogethernow



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud, Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bartimaeus Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Be the Obscure Crossover You Want to See in the World, Class Issues, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Friendship, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-12 07:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9062605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawltogethernow/pseuds/brawltogethernow
Summary: For Tarvek, success will be hard work, but uncomplicated. Become a great magician, outstrip the competition, take charge of the government of the British Empire. Don't reveal your birth name, or fraternize with demons or commoners.Simple.





	1. Tarvek Steals a Book

**Author's Note:**

> This is _incredibly_ niche appeal. In another universe, I made a speculative Tumblr post about this and then mostly forgot about it forever. But this is not there. Hats off to all five people invested in both these canons.
> 
> Wrt content: Institutionalized slavery and child neglect/abuse as well as extreme classism are endemic to the setting. ...That makes the trilogy sound incredibly dark, which...it...is. Consider this a rec, though - despite the dark subject matter, it is _hilarious_.
> 
> If you are one of said five people, you may notice that aside from fusion stuff this is a soft AU for several minor and incredibly specific worldbuilding details of Stroud's London. It's partly for plot reasons, partly to avoid twisting myself into knots.
> 
> "A demon, a corrupt politician, and a terrorist: these are your heroes" has become sort of a broader Bart fandom joke - so broad, in fact, that I can't find the original Tumblr post to cite it. :/ It's [this](http://floor19.tumblr.com/post/61994368103/aaaah-the-tag-is-just-exploding-with-such), I think, maybe.

“The real problem isn’t the demons,” says Aaronev. “It’s the commoners.” He sets his cup of tea back into its saucer with a _click_.

As always at these instructional meetings, Tarvek has also been given tea. At the age of seven, he doesn’t really care for its bitter taste, but he always tries to choke down as much as he can anyway when he thinks he’s the least likely to be expected to respond. He doesn’t think he is expected to respond now, but. That can’t be right, can it? “But,” he ventures, “the commoners are just humans?”

Aaronev’s hand slams down on the table. Tarvek flinches. “Do not contradict me,” he thunders, incensed. “Think, child! It is like you said — demons aren’t even human! They’re stupid! Cunning, sometimes, yes, but they have no will. Their intellect is sub-sentient, and they are easily corralled with runes and charms.”

Tarvek nods frantically, and doesn’t dare to ask what “sub-sentient” means. When his parents sold him and his master took him in, the women in charge of the transaction muttered to each other about “what happened to his _last_ apprentice”. Tarvek has been a little afraid of him ever since.

“The commoners,” says Aaronev, his rage seeming to have settled into the rhythm of the lecture he had already been preparing, “are much harder to control. They need to be kept distracted, and complacent, or our entire base of power falls apart. We would be a body ruling over no one. Do you understand?”

Tarvek thinks, _Not really,_ even as he’s already nodding.

“Good,” says his master, settling back in his chair and looking at Tarvek appraisingly. “That is all for today. You’re dismissed.”

Abandoning his fine china cup, Tarvek scurries out of the drawing room.

 

When Tarvek was given away to be apprenticed to a magician, he was told to forget his name, because it would be a liability. He didn’t, though. He isn’t really sure how anyone could actually do that. They say he’ll get another one when he turns twelve.

There are faint hints in the bedroom he’s been given off the kitchen that someone lived there before him. There’s tape stuck to one spot on the wall, and a heart and a rough dagger shape carved into the wood of the windowsill. He wonders if it’s from the previous apprentice.

 

“Wulfenbach,” his master says, “is not right for this country.” Aaronev often speaks this way about the Prime Minister, sometimes mixed in with lessons, sometimes just after a long day attending to his duties at Parliament. “But learnéd men of power know this, and one man cannot rule forever! One day, one of _our_ apprentices will replace him, and steer the British Empire in the _right_ direction.” He levels a significant look at Tarvek. “Do you understand?”

His eyes are lit up, fanatic, and Tarvek wonders how many other apprentices throughout the city receive this same intention, whether Aaronev spoke this way to his last apprentice.

That’s okay. Tarvek is better than her. He just has to show up all of them.

 

In the interest of preserving his personal safety by outstripping the accomplishments of his predecessor and remaining several steps ahead of his anonymous competition dispersed across London, Tarvek decides when he’s eight that it’s high time he summon something.

Summoning is the magician’s true art, the backbone of their power that they use to rule. His master says summoned spirits are like resources, lending protection and enhancing one’s capability.

It’s also supposed to be wildly dangerous to attempt if you haven’t received an official name, lest the demons find out your true one and use it to bring about your destruction. Tarvek doesn’t really see _why_. Either way you just have to not tell them your birth name, which he’s supposed to have forgotten by now to start with, and you’re not supposed to reveal your official name either if you can get away with it _anyway_ , so what difference does it make?

So he plots, entertaining vague fantasies of practicing in secret and then revealing he’s mastered the art far ahead of schedule at a suitably dramatic moment. He determines that the best way to obtain a reference book containing the names of entities without alerting his master will be to wait for the latest installment containing annotations and corrections to the most common texts, for perusal before they’re folded into new editions, to arrive in the mail, and then divert it before it ever reaches its destination. Aaronev receives them because he has a running subscription — honestly, he may not even notice one not arriving. And if he does, well. Surely something went wrong with the post. Most of the names in such a volume that aren’t included to note that a demon is now deceased will probably belong to entities whose names were only discovered relatively recently. But that just means they won’t outstrip him quite as much in experience, so it’s probably a good thing, right?

Several weeks of diligently devoting part of his morning schedule to watching the mail (his schedule already demands he wakes early), and his attention is rewarded. Tarvek successfully co-opts the package from the publisher before his master has any idea it’s arrived.

Tarvek stashes the book in his room and then continues his day normally. He flies into a silent panic at every scrape and cough that might be his master and in his excitement is scolded by both of that day’s tutors for not having his mind fully on his lessons, but when he adjourns to his room at a normal time no one seems any the wiser.

Tarvek opens the slim volume with exaggerated care. He fancies his fingers are tingling. The creamy pages contain rather plain columns of lists stacked several to a page broken by blocks of text, but they _feel_ powerful.

They _are._

 _Knowledge is power._ Tarvek is pretty sure he heard that in school, before he ever thought he would be a magician.

Tarvek spends the evening rifling through columns of black words. As he suspected, almost all of the names not citing a creature as deceased belong to newly discovered spirits, bar a few mentioned in descriptions of events or due to their relation to other spirits. Those lack descriptive details, with footnoted citations to other texts Tarvek doesn’t have access to.

In a development he did _not_ expect, these volumes of updates are apparently sorted into subcategories. This one barely covers any entities level 3 or below. A leaflet tucked into the pages promises _The companion book covering imps, foliots, and lower-level spirits to be released in June from Heliotrope Presses!_

Heart picking up hammering again (Tarvek hadn’t really noticed he’d stopped panicking until he started again), he nearly calls the whole thing off then and there. Practicing summoning in secret _with a mid- or high-level spirit_ might be what pushes the whole idea over the edge into suicidally foolhardy.

He stashes the book and leaves his room to have a lonely cup of juice. He avoids the help, who are scared of Aaronev and of Tarvek by affiliation.

As the power of a demon increases, common consensus agrees, so does their canniness, and their resentment at being chained. But, he’s already lain so much groundwork, and…maybe its relative inexperience will sort of — balance things out? Most unearthly servants have millennia of experience to draw on, which they’ve spent tricking, wheedling, and brute-forcing their way out of the grip of the heroic magicians who tried to subdue their power and rechannel it as a force of good. Not so one whose name is only newly found.

…Plus, “Oh, yes, I skipped over summoning mites and moulers — my first summoning was a proper djinni” would sound really impressive, on paper.

Okay, so he’s doing this.

He leaves his cup in the sink and returns to the secondhand bedroom. He slides the book out from where he left it under his assigned reading, and shoves away the pages containing indexes of afrits and marids, because he’s not _insane_ , and flicks all the way back to the front of the book. But he does let his eyes flick over from the level 3 djinn to the level fours, because if he’s already going to be foolhardy, it might as well be a _little_ more impressive.

He skips between mostly-sparse descriptions, before selecting one he’s sure he can pronounce.

He says it a few times, testing it out. For this to work, he’ll need to be able to say it perfectly.

“Gilgamesh.” Yes, that one will do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically my worst nightmare is publishing something serially and then realizing I have to go back and make substantial edits to make it work, so we'll see how this goes.


	2. An Etiquette Lesson

This encounter is not going how he expected it would.

Oh, everything is in order. He acquired rosemary and chalk as he needed it. He must have drawn his circles correctly, as he has, miraculously, not yet suffered a gruesome death. And yet…

“These are some, ah, interesting rooms you’ve got here,” says the demon in the opposite pentacle in a light male voice. It sounds like it’s trying to be _polite?_

“Uh…. Speak not your foul words to me, dread demon?” ventures Tarvek, aware that while the words are traditional, sounding lost is probably striking the wrong tone. “Also, there’s no need to make small talk, I know this room isn’t worth looking twice at.”

“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh,” says the demon, sounding petulant. The miffed tone of voice and the attempt at courtesy are doubly odd because it has taken the form of a small storm cloud. It hovers at about adult head height within the demon’s slightly larger pentacle. It rolls constantly in place, keeping it in continuous motion. Tarvek is literally fielding awkward small talk from grouchy weather.

The little cloud darkens as it continues, “It’s _rude_ , you know.”

“Sorry,” says Tarvek reflexively. Then, “Wait, no.”

Oh, god, this is already a disaster. Forget bragging rights: He can never reveal the details of his first summoning to _anybody._

The demon lets out a startled laugh with a snort in it. Tarvek’s utter lack of professionalism has inspired snorting from an inhuman being that _doesn’t even have a nose._

“I’m not supposed to converse or parley with you,” says Tarvek sulkily. “And I don’t see how it can be rude if it’s _traditional._ ”

“Things can be traditionally rude,” says the demon firmly, with a cadence like this is something it heard somewhere. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense, since Tarvek doesn’t think demons trade a lot of brusque pearls of wisdom.

“What?” says Tarvek.

“ _What?_ ” demands the cloud. A tiny flash of lightning flickers through it. “It’s true, and you know it.”

Tarvek doesn’t think that sounds right, but he can’t pin down _why_ he feels like that. “ _Look,_ ” he says, suddenly irritated. He pushes his glasses up where they’re slipping down his nose. “If you’re going to argue with me, can you at _least_ look like something I can argue _with?_ Your being condensation makes me feel like an idiot.”

“Truly,” says the cloud, “that must be new for you.”

“Whah — Hey!”

Ignoring him, the cloud slinks low, begins to roll with more purpose, condensing around a shadowy shape.

Tarvek braces himself, waiting for the demon to turn into some horrific monster right out of a grisly illustration, tailor-made to terrifying him into losing his mental footing. This was meant to be something impressive and dramatic, and now it’s going to be.

The air in the pentacle clears to reveal a small blue lobster. Well, it’s large… _for a lobster._ It clicks a claw at him.

“ _No!_ ” says Tarvek.

“What?” it says, in the same voice as before. “Lobsters are great.”

“What would you even know about lobsters?!”

“A _lot_ , _ac_ tually. Would it make it better if I gave it a hat?”

“ _Why_ would that make it better.”

“Are you sure?”

“ _Gilgamesh._ ”

“ _Fi_ -ne.” The lobster dissolves back into a cloud, like it was a shape made of coincidentally arranged fog all along, only meant to last until the wind changed it.

The fog curls around the pentacle, darting up and down like it’s testing the confines of its space. Tarvek gulps, even though he knows that the pentacle _must_ be fine, and it almost seems more curious than anything. The fog rolls up, higher than it had been but lower than earlier, still curling about the air within the pentacle like the mist that hugs the ground on cold a spring morning, and seems to turn its consideration on _Tarvek_. The mist stops cold at the chalk line, like it’s hit a glass wall.

The fog doesn’t have features, so it’s hard to say whether it’s accurate that it seems… _assessing._

It pulls in on itself again, roiling ruminatively. The skin on Tarvek’s arms tingles, but he mentally prepares for another lobster-style disappointment.

This time, instead of the cloud gracefully ducking in and then clearing, it just stops being, all at once, and is replaced with something else. Tarvek blames this for why he jumps in surprise at the boy standing opposite him.

The demon has assumed the guise of a human about Tarvek’s own age. He has fluffy brown hair, brown eyes, and warm brownish skin and features of indeterminate race. It’s chosen clothes with what strikes Tarvek as a kind of thoughtlessly plain timelessness, sturdy-looking and forget-me khaki. It’s foregone shoes.

The demon grins cheekily at him. “Better?” it asks. The grin reveals that it’s given the guise unnaturally prominent incisors. The voice it speaks with is the same one as before, but adjusted to match its appearance, which draws Tarvek’s attention to how it was oddly generic and sourceless before. Now it sounds like…a person, rather than a phenomenon.

Tarvek suddenly feels like he might be in too deep.

The not-boy raises his illusory eyebrows at Tarvek, still waiting on a response. They’re rather heavy. All of the texts Tarvek has read indicated that demons who take humanoid forms try to appeal to people by constructing visages of timeless beauty, or uncanny horror. This is neither. It just has…personality. It can’t be someone’s actual appearance, unless Gilgamesh knows a human’s true name. Maybe the demon is just really creative.

Tarvek coughs. “Yes, that’s fine.” He tries to get the encounter back on track. “Are you ready to receive your orders, demon?”

It stretches, putting the guise’s arms behind the guise’s head. Barefoot, the boy is just, barely, ever-so-slightly, taller than Tarvek is. That _has_ to be on purpose.

“‘Demon, demon, demon,’” it says. “You really _are_ rude.”

He is _not_ , that’s not even fair. “And what am I _supposed_ to call you?” he asks it.

“I am a _djinni_ ,” it says primly.

“Yes, and a demon,” says Tarvek, who doesn’t get what he’s working at. What _it’s_ working at. “Djinn are a type of demon.”

The boy guise scowls, fantastically thunderous. Maybe _that’s_ what the eyebrows are for, because they’re definitely helping. “Yes, if you’re determined to _be rude_ about it.”

“What _else_ am I supposed to say?!”

“’Spirit’?” it suggests, spreading its hands.

“What, because that doesn’t _sound_ as unpleasant?”

“You say that like it doesn’t matter,” it says, raising a mighty judgmental eyebrow.

“Hmph,” says Tarvek.

“Also!” it says, raising a helpful finger, apparently on a roll. “True names. Also rude.”

Tarvek blinks, feeling lost again. “My true name is?” Is this one of those infamous tricks to discover it?

The djinni scowls even harder with its fabricated, but convincing, eight-year-old-boy face. “No, _mine._ You don’t need to bandy it about. I already know you _know_ it, because it’s the entire mechanism that’s allowed you to trap me here.” He kicks the invisible barrier protecting Tarvek from him, which actually lets out a shower of sparks. They look like they hurt, but if they did the boy guise ignores it. “And if someone heard you then _they_ could summon me, too. You’re inconveniencing both of us to throw your weight around.”

Tarvek sputters. At eight, he is already possessed of the strong conviction that throwing your weight _any_ where is the path of the brute and the idiot, and is not by any stretch the best way to win. He is _gravely insulted._

…He’s let a _spirit_ get to him. He’s being dumb; he needs to remember himself. “I did _not_ summon you here for an etiquette lesson,” he informs it, trying for and even mostly striking grave and firm.

The demon regards him, reads the change in the mood, and shrugs easily. “What do you charge me then?”

Tarvek has come up with a test request ahead of time, which he thinks is fairly clever. He raises a hand, for show. “I charge you, Gilgamesh, to acquire for me a copy of Heliotrope Presses’ _Index of Annotations and Updates to Essential Texts, 42 nd edition, Part I_. It is to be legible and complete, and you are to acquire it without being caught or observed.” He hesitates. “Make sure it’s part one.”

“Okay.”

“I already have Part II.”

“I — okay?”

“So it’s important…to avoid redundancy.”

“So how did you get Part II but have to magic up Part I?”

There is a long, awkward pause.

Tarvek coughs into his fist. “Question not your master, spirit, or I shall submit you to the Red-Hot Stipples.”

Gilgamesh snorts again. How embarrassing.

They stand there, Tarvek slightly red and something that looks convincingly like another child his age snickering softly into his hands at him.

“Shut up,” snaps Tarvek. “Are you _going_ or not?”

Gilgamesh grins at Tarvek one last time, manic and oddly sincere and his mouth full of more jagged craggy teeth than there were last time. “You forgot to dismiss me,” he says.

“Oh, right,” mutters Tarvek, and does that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to fail the marshmallow test with me, a future chapter of this is on Tumblr [here](http://brawltogethernow.tumblr.com/post/160906118247/meet-cute-the-author-fails-the-marshmallow).


	3. Gil's Delivery Service

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to publish a chapter under 1k on its own because I feel like serial updates that are both very spread out _and_ short are pushing it, but on the other hand _it's been a calendar year._

Gilgamesh appears in the pentacle with a flashy crack of thunder this time, his child form appearing in a crack of light.

“Do you have —” begins Tarvek.

“Here you go!” says the spirit, beaming (too toothily) and producing an orange-bound hardcover from nowhere with a flourish. Literally from nowhere. Apparently spirits can do that? Or maybe there was an illusion involved. Tarvek makes a mental note to look this up later.

The boy guise puts his hand on his chin and considers Tarvek, squinting, then affects a stance that telegraphs that he intends to toss the book to Tarvek out of his pentacle.

“ _Don’t you dare_ ,” forbids Tarvek. (The djinni’s stance wilts in disappointment.) He points imperiously down at the floor. “Put it in the bowl.”

The bowl in question rests just outside the larger circle confining Gilgamesh. The spirit considers it. Then instead of complying he asks, “Is this _crystal?_ ”

“What?” says Tarvek, flustered. He had borrowed it from one of Aaronev’s cupboards, not having anything suitable. “I don’t know, maybe. How would you even know that? Just put the book in it!”

“I can’t believe you put crystal on the floor,” mutters Gilgamesh, crouching down to comply. The book leaves the circle; his fingers don’t. He carefully doesn’t get close enough to send up sparks and betray the illusion that they could if he wanted them to.

“Now scoot it —” Gilgamesh has already sent it sliding across the floor. “— Shouldn’t you wait until I finish telling you what to do?!”

“Sorry,” says Gilgamesh with a frank sincerity Tarvek for some reason finds hard to take seriously. He scowls lightly at the djinni just in case and begins the process of getting the book the rest of the way over to him without going beyond his own pentacle, which would break the protections it affords him and allow the dangerous spirit bound opposite total freedom. He built an apparatus in his spare time in anticipation of this from things he found lying around. He could have just used a stick but, well, he didn’t have a stick.

“Ooh,” says Gilgamesh, leaning forward looking seriously intrigued. “What is _that?_ ”

“It’s a winch,” says Tarvek, successfully acquiring the book. And then, rather recklessly, considers the potential cons only very briefly before tossing the device overhand to Gilgamesh, much as the spirit had been planning to do with the book.

Only while it is already in the air does it occur to Tarvek with a thrill of terror that even though Gilgamesh won’t be any less harmless in any way Tarvek can think of with a grabbing device, and Tarvek can’t see any scenarios where by losing it he is giving up a relevant advantage, he could still dodge it, and then if it happened to hit the edge of the demon’s pentacle and break the chalk line, Tarvek could have sealed his own demise. But then the spirit has caught it, not having appeared to have given any thought to not doing so, and is examining it with interest.

The spirit spins the glorified claw around in his fabricated hands and runs it through its paces a few times, humming. Tarvek, refusing to panic unnecessarily any longer, looks down to examine the book in his hands.

A few seconds of cursory flipping later Tarvek looks up again. “Did you _annotate it?_ ” he asks.

“It’s still complete,” Gilgamesh assures him, guise’s eyes still on the winch as he winds and spins it. “The original text is all there and legible,” he says. “You didn’t say I couldn't _add_ things.”

It hadn't occurred to Tarvek to forbid this. How long are orders even supposed to _be?_

A few of the entries have been marked with a neat, loopy hand that looks like it was burned directly onto the page. The notes are mostly by names, and without fail say things like ‘doesn’t like to work with imps’ or, sometimes, consist of just arrows pointing to words leading from the word ‘No’, or another word.

“This is…fine,” Tarvek grants begrudgingly, trying not to sound as befuddled as he feels. If this is a trick, it’s a very strange one. Even if every single one of the annotations is a complete lie, it doesn’t seem like even blindly following them would actually matter, except in extremely complicated circumstances.

…Maybe he’ll steer clear of all the marked spirits, just in case. Or maybe _that’s_ what the spirit wants?

“I’ve just met a few of them is all,” says Gilgamesh, holding Tarvek’s winch casually at his side and not appearing mindful of Tarvek’s suspicious regard of him.

“…Rrrright,” says Tarvek. This sort of thing wasn’t in any of the books. Obviously, he needs better books. He should _write_ better books. But they are fairly clear on the next bit. “Well, _spirit_ ,” he says, with extra emphasis on where he’s changed up a word. (Gilgamesh looks approving.) “Since you’ve completed the task with which I’ve charged you, you’re free to go.”

“Alright,” says Gilgamesh amicably. The human guise starts to look a little transparent, starting at the feet and fading up. “See you around.”

Tarvek blinks, hard. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says without thinking. “I’m not going to summon you again.” He has _safe_ options now.

“Oh,” says the fading djinni. He sounds… _disappointed?_ ”

“I mean —!” Tarvek scrambles for an answer, even though he doesn’t need to give one. “M-maybe I’ll call on you in ten years, when I’m a powerful magician.”

The djinni makes its semiopaque boy guise tilt its head and raise a skeptical eyebrow.

“Rrrrriiiiight,” it says, imitating Tarvek from before, maybe intentionally, maybe not. “Well,” it says, “good lu —”

And then it’s gone.

Tarvek is left alone in his empty bedroom, still smelling slightly of smoke and rainstorms, with nothing but the slight sting of the false boy’s lack of faith to keep him company.


End file.
